Looks like the Taliban will have crushed NATO

MacKay set to deliver stern warning to NATO

CAMPBELL CLARK

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA — Canada and other countries bearing the brunt of a counterinsurgency in southern Afghanistan will warn NATO defence ministers today that the future of the alliance is on the line unless other members commit more combat troops.

Canada's Defence Minister, Peter MacKay, who arrived in the Lithuanian capital yesterday, made clear that Ottawa is not prepared to negotiate over its conditions for remaining in Kandahar beyond 2009: another 1,000 NATO combat troops and help obtaining helicopters and unmanned drones.

"I expect blunt talk and a frank discussion about - certainly from our perspective - where we find ourselves and what we'd like to see," he said before leaving Canada.

The blunt talk had already begun yesterday, with U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates warning that the failure of some countries to commit more combat troops "puts a cloud over the future of the alliance."

He said that only the Canadians, British, Australians, Dutch and Danes "are really out there on the line and fighting" and said he doubts a seven-month deployment of 3,200 U.S. Marines to southern Afghanistan, to begin in March, will be enough.

"I worry a great deal about the alliance evolving into a two-tiered alliance, in which you have some allies willing to fight and die to protect people's security, and others who are not," Mr. Gates said during a Senate hearing in Washington.

He said he has sent letters to every alliance defence minister asking them to contribute more troops and equipment, but hasn't received any replies.

Although he did not identify the other tier, the reluctance of major European countries, such as Germany, Italy and Spain, to commit combat troops to Afghanistan's dangerous south has led to frustration among those who have.

Germany's Defence Minister, Franz Josef Jung, ruled out again yesterday sending troops to the south, even as his country agreed to deploy an additional rapid-reaction force of about 200 to the relatively stable north, where Germany already has about 3,000 soldiers.

In London to discuss Afghanistan strategy with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that NATO faces a turning point.

"The alliance is facing a real test here and it is a test of the alliance's strength," she said at a news conference with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. "Our populations need to understand this is not a peacekeeping mission. This is a counterinsurgency problem and that's different."

Mr. Brown said NATO needs to share troop and equipment burdens more equitably and called for countries to commit more at an April summit of the alliance's 26 national leaders in Bucharest, Romania.

"What we are looking for, particularly when it comes to the NATO summit a few weeks from now, is a determination on the part of all our allies to ensure the burden-sharing in Afghanistan is fair," he said in the British House of Commons.

While in Vilnius, Mr. MacKay is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Defence Minister Hervé Morin of France - a country that Canada sees as a bright hope for committing troops to Kandahar.

He is also slated to hold bilateral talks with counterparts from countries with troops in southern Afghanistan, including the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands. And tomorrow, he will chair a meeting of ministers from those countries - essentially the group pressuring other countries to do more.

Original article posted here.